Looking back, IPC, Intel Pentium 4 vs AMD Athlon XP

[humbug]

The problem AMD had back in the early days of P4 was that 1.8A Northwood overclocked to 2.7ghz+ and the 2.4A to 3.3ghz+ and AMD just couldn't compete, they were the cheap alternative. They also relied a lot on crap VIA chipsets which I imagine is what put industry off (on top of anti-competitive behaviour by Intel). Athlon64 and x2 is about the time their CPU's were really attractive to top end users again.

It really didn't matter Athlon XP IPC was 2x that of the P4, the P4 was clocked that high to try and compete with Athlon but still fell well short. watch the video.

 

[Armageus]

It really didn't matter Athlon XP IPC was 2x that of the P4, the P4 was clocked that high to try and compete with Athlon but still fell well short. watch the video.

Eh? That video discusses athlon64/x2 and Pentium D, nothing to do with Athlon XP

 

[humbug]

What ever it is called its what we are talking about here.

 

[Armageus]

What ever it is called its what we are talking about here.

Whatever it is, its absolute tripe and alternate history to suit the video creators bias.

 

[mmj_uk]

I literally said:

"Athlon64 and x2 is about the time their CPU's were really attractive to top end users again."

You talk about Athlon XP but then post benchmarks of Athlon64.

My point was that for a long time the P4 was better than AMD's offerings, primarily due to more stable chipsets and the lower IPC was overcome by how well Northwood cores overclocked. 1.8A and 2.4A Northwood's were legendary. IIRC the chipset was the limitation for 1.8A overclocking, they capped out at about 150-155 FSB but they were still more stable than VIA chipsets even when pushed to the limit.

Pentium 4 1.8A released January, 2002 (overclocked to 2.7ghz)
Pentium 4 2.4 released April 2, 2002 (these did 3.3ghz+)
Athlon XP 2700+ released October 1, 2002
Athlon XP 2800+ released October 1, 2002 (fastest available Thoroughbred core)

Athlon64 wasn't released until the end of 2003.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I literally said:



You talk about Athlon XP but then post benchmarks of Athlon64.

My point was that for a long time the P4 was better than AMD's offerings, primarily due to more stable chipsets and the lower IPC was overcome by how well Northwood cores overclocked. 1.8A and 2.4A Northwood's were legendary. IIRC the chipset was the limitation for 1.8A overclocking, they capped out at about 150-155 FSB but they were still more stable than VIA chipsets even when pushed to the limit.

I had both the Pentium 4 2.53GHZ Northwood B and Athlon XP 2800. Even the Pentium D 805.

Northwood A came out in early 2002,and Northwood B in the second half of 2002. The Athlon 64 came out at the end of 2003 and the Core2 came out in July 2006. The Athlon came out in August 1999 and the Athlon XP in October 2001:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/355

The Athlon did very well against the PIII.

Intel then had issues with the Pentium 3 1.13GHZ which were famous at the time since they were trying to beat AMD:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/613/3

Then the Athlon XP was released in 2001 and it beat the Pentium 4 Willamette:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/835

Then the XP2100 was released in early 2002:

https://techreport.com/review/3481/amd-athlon-xp-2100-processor

Even Northwood A wasn't a slam dunk.

Conclusions
There's still life left in the Palomino, no doubt about it. At 1.73GHz, the Athlon XP 2100+ outruns the Pentium 4 2.2GHz in many of our tests—especially when the P4 is stripped of the slight advantage it gets from RDRAM.

That said, which processor will be fastest for you depends on your needs. For general use in business applications and content creation tasks, the Athlon XP 2100+ rules the roost. AMD's latest is also best at real computational grunt work, like 3D rendering and scientific computing, provided that memory bandwidth isn't the primary limitation in your application.

In our gaming tests, the Athlon XP and Pentium 4 were very evenly matched. But for strictly memory-limited applications, there's no denying the P4's prowess. In our test suite, the Sphinx and ScienceMark Primordia tests are the best examples of memory bandwidth-limited apps. The P4 cleaned up in those tests, regardless of RAM type. Perhaps it's the 400MHz bus or perhaps it's the P4's memory prefetch and SSE streaming abilities. Whatever it is, the Pentium 4 makes much better use of the memory bandwidth available to it, and it shows.

So picking the fastest CPU solely on its merits here isn't easy. If you're unsure which brand of performance—Athlon XP or Pentium 4—will suit you best, rest assured that both CPUs are extremely fast. The places where one excels over the other are areas of strength, not weakness.

However, once you get down to the price-performance equation, AMD still leads. Here's how AMD's pricing will look now that the XP 2100+ has hit the scene.

Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73GHz) - $420
Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz) - $339
Athlon XP 1900+ (1.60GHz) - $231
Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) - $188
Athlon XP 1700+ (1.47GHz) - $157
Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4GHz) - $130
The list price on the Athlon XP 2100+ is about 50 bucks lower than the street price on a Pentium 4 2.2GHz. Sounds good, but AMD is kinda-sorta raising prices here, in the sense that the Athlon XP 2000+ was $339 upon its debut in early January. Now, the list price for the fastest Athlon XP is 80 bucks higher, and the Athlon XP 2000+'s price remains unchanged. That's not a raw deal, but it is uncharacteristic for AMD. Apparently, the success of the model numbering scheme has inspired enough confidence for AMD to keep prices higher. (That, or they're storing up price cuts for a potential price war with Intel. I wouldn't be shocked to see one in the next few months.) Regardless, the Athlon XP 2100+ is a helluva thing. It is—maybe, probably, depending on your application—the fastest x86 processor anywhere. For now.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/athlon-xp-2100,436-16.html

The unveiling of the Athlon XP 2100+ propels the Palomino core to its penultimate level - according to unofficial comments, AMD will present the Athlon XP 2200+ in a matter of only a few weeks. The presently fastest Athlon XP runs at 1733 MHz, while the Athlon XP 2200+ runs at a clock speed of 1800 MHz .

They are manufactured using the 0.18 micron process; the Athlon XP with Thoroughbred core, slated to be launched in the second quarter of this year, will be the first Athlon to be based on 0.13 micrometer-wide strip conductors. AMD will definitely have to apply the new technology if it wants to reach higher clock speeds. Still, the 'Thoroughbred' is merely a Palomino that has been somewhat reduced in size; new features will not be added.

Our test results show that AMD won't have to worry any time soon, even if its arch enemy Intel keeps turning up the megahertz-dial. The reason? Even at its considerably lower clock speed, the AMD Athlon outstrips its competitor Intel when used with your everyday applications. The benchmark results present a clear picture.

The Athlon XP 2100+ was outperformed by the P4/2200 only when it came to 'office performance'. In some disciplines not based on optimized software, the Athlon XP 2100+ even reached the level of a Pentium 4 at 2.4 GHz, which will not be introduced until early April. Don't forget that only using a Rambus platform will enable the Intel Pentium 4 to perform to the max.

This stands in stark contrast to Intel officially turning its back on serial memory technology and its embracing of DDR SDRAM. The monopoly has clearly been influenced by the market in this aspect. AMD paints a different picture, though. The Athlon XP works better with DDR RAM and can reach considerably higher clock speeds after the die shrink - at least in theory.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/athlon-xp-2100,436-16.html


Considering the effect they had on Intel at the time,I would argue,the Pentium 4's reign at the "top" was less than the Athlon/Athlon XP. So in nearly 7 years,AMD was significantly faster in 2.5 of them,for nearly 3 years they won several times,and in just under 21 months,Intel pipped them to the post by pushing a huge amount of power with 2.4GHZ+ Pentium 4 CPUs,needing motherboards with beefy VRMs,and lots of cooling.

 

[mmj_uk]

Just look at reviews of the day to get an idea of the climate at the time:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1164/18

Seemingly overnight AMD went from about to fall off of the performance charts to being competitive with Intel's latest and greatest. But there's much more to this situation than proclaiming a winner and leaving it at that; AMD has lost a considerable amount of credibility, and the Athlon 64 (and FX) of today will not bring AMD back to the heydays of the Athlon.
...
AMD has also priced the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX very much like the Pentium 4s they compete with, which is a mistake for a company that has lost so much credibility. AMD needed to significantly undercut Intel (but not as much as they did with the Athlon XP) in order to offer users a compelling reason to switch from Intel.

It doesn't exactly sound like AMD were destroying Intel does it?

Also don't forget that as good as Athlon64 was back when it was released nearly all software at the time was 32bit, so 64bit performance was largely irrelevant.

 

[mmj_uk]

Even Northwood A wasn't a slam dunk.

I am mainly just going by memory, 1.8A and 2.4A Northwood's were extremely popular among overclockers. AMD were seen as the cheap alternative. I switched to Athlon64 and x2 (anyone remember the Opteron's?) after that so P4 obviously wasn't attractive later on in its life.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I am mainly just going by memoiry, 1.8A and 2.4A Northwood's were extremely popular among overclockers. AMD were seen as the cheap alternative. I switched to Athlon64 and x2 (anyone remember the Opteron's?) after that so P4 obviously wasn't attractive later on in its life.

I am going by memory too - a lot of my mates were gamers,and the Pentium 4 was a laughing stock until the Northwood series,and as the reviews showed even the initial release was beaten by the XP2100+ and it took for the later Northwood A P4 chips over 2.4GHZ to start getting anywhere,and OFC the Northwood B. This is why I had a Northwood B Pentium 4 too. OTH,you also had CPUs like the Athlon XP 1700+ which could be overclocked a decent amount too.

Then if you go by the earlier Athlon MK1 and the Athlon XP,everytime Intel had something faster AMD just released something quickly and beat them. I would make that 2.5 years from the Athlon MK1 to the first release of Northwood A where AMD generally had the edge,and then it took a few months for higher clockspeed Northwood A chips to actually start pulling ahead since the Athlon XP couldn't clock high enough,so that is between 2.5 to 3 years. Once the Athlon 64 came out Intel had to release the Emergency Edition P4 to compete,and then Pres-hot came along.

Just look at reviews of the day to get an idea of the climate at the time:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1164/18



It doesn't exactly sound like AMD were destroying Intel does it?

Also don't forget that as good as Athlon64 was back when it was released nearly all software at the time was 32bit, so 64bit performance was largely irrelevant.

Thats the thing though it did well in 32 bit applications and was strong in 64 bit ones,and Intel had to end up pushing HT containing benchmarks as time progressed to look more competitive yet HT at the time had a lot of its own issues too.

https://techreport.com/review/5683/amd-athlon-64-processor

Conclusions
AMD's Athlon 64 processors are very impressive performers. They inherit all the strengths of the Athlon XP, but few of the weaknesses. For a long while, the give-and-take between the Pentium 4 and Athlon XP involved a kind of imbalance, with the Pentium 4 dominating in certain types of benchmarks while the Athlon XP dominated in others. No more. With very fast memory access and SSE2 support, the Athlon 64 chips match up well against the P4 in nearly every way. Our set of benchmarks is a little heavy on 3D rendering, where optimizations for SSE2 and Hyper-Threading bolster the Pentium 4, but overall, the Athlon 64 FX-51 stakes a strong claim to the title of fastest x86 processor. The FX-51 is so flat-out quick in 3D gaming, one wonders whether the Pentium 4 3.2GHz Extreme Edition doesn't exist just to save face for Intel. Were it not for the Extreme Edition's copious amounts of L3 cache, the Athlon 64 FX-51 would nearly have run the tables in our gaming tests.

The P4 Extreme Edition does hold its own against the Athlon 64 FX, and you have to like Intel's willingness to mine its Xeon line for extra desktop performance. I am a little surprised by the breadth of the benchmarks in which the Extreme Edition's massive amounts of on-chip cache improve performance over the stock Pentium 4, especially the games. When you can practically load Quake III into cache and execute it, though, good things are bound to happen. Let's hope Intel follows through with sufficient volumes and somewhat reasonable pricing on the P4 Extreme Edition. It shouldn't cost a penny more than the Athlon 64 FX-51, especially because the Extreme Edition seems to heat up our test labs noticeably more than any other CPU we've tested. That's just a seat-of-my-pants evaluation, but I swear, the seat of my pants got pretty sweaty.

For those of us with more pedestrian spending limits, the Athlon 64 3200+ looks like a great value. Yes, it costs over 400 bucks, but the stock Pentium 4 3.2GHz is selling for more than $600 right now. The Athlon 64 3200+ maybe trails the P4 3.2GHz in overall performance by the thinnest of margins, but no way is the P4 worth another $150 to $200. And that's without considering the 64-bit question.

In fact, we've barely scratched the surface of the 64-bit issue beyond confirming that the Windows 64-bit pre-beta seems to run 32-bit code reasonably well. AMD supplied some 64-bit test apps with the Athlon 64 FX-51 review system, but I'm afraid we spent too much time investigating new graphics chips to devote proper attention to the Athlon 64's AMD64 extensions. We'll have to look at that in a future article. Of course, the true test of 64-bit performance will come with a release OS and real 64-bit applications, assuming they become available. AMD seems to be making all the right moves to garner support for AMD64, but this is new territory. We're all wondering how successful AMD's 64-bit initiative will be, and only time will tell.

All in all, Hammer translates surprisingly well to the desktop. That didn't seem like a foregone conclusion when the first Opterons arrived this past spring at lower clock frequencies, but the Hammer core scales exceedingly well with clock speed. So long as AMD can ramp up supply of Athlon 64 chips at a decent pace and keep raising clock speeds to counter Intel's upcoming Prescott core, it looks like a winner.

http://www.hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/625-amd-athlon64-fx-51/?page=11

Thoughts and musings
Limited frequency headroom forced AMD into designing a CPU that could do more for a given clock speed and scale higher than the current Barton core. This wasn't a decision taken a few months ago on a whim, it was an ambitious project started many years ago. AMD's been playing a naming game of late. The Opteron CPU, love or loathe the name, showed its strengths when unveiled in April. Happily running in a uniprocessor system for workstation-class application, or residing in an 8-way 64-bit server full of architectural niceties such as HyperTransport links to one another, compatibility with existing 32-bit code, independent memory pools, and scalable bandwidth made it a decent choice for midrange business. AMD has now sought to extend the Opteron's usefulness to the home consumer market. The Athlon64 FX-51 is currently AMD's top-of-the-range consumer-orientated CPU. Don't be put off by its meagre 2.2GHz clock speed. With most of the benefits that the Barton XP3200+ currently enjoys and clever engineering, encompassing on-die memory controllers, SOI manufacturing, larger, more efficient L2 cache, SSE2 instruction sets and a plethora of other performance-enhancing extras, the FX-51 has taken a sledgehammer (sorry, bad joke) to the present Barton XP3200+'s performance.

Performance, it seems, is truly excellent for a processor that's still knee-deep in x86 32-bit architecture, yet the same CPU also has to ability to effortlessly morph into a 64-bit CPU and all the benefits that larger memory addressing and optimising creates. 64-bit, whilst being one of the fundamental advances put forward by AMD, is not really applicable to home users yet. We'll have to wait for compliant OS's and drivers before we can judge its effectiveness. That's one of the FX's strong points. It's great now, and it promises to be great in a year or two's time. Our 32-bit benchmarks showed that the FX-51 has the beating of any current 32-bit CPU, including Intel's finest. It's kind of awe-inspiring to see just what kind of dent it puts into the P4's armour. Make no mistake about it, the Prescott needs to be a fantastic CPU if it's to wrestle the performance crown away from the FX-5x series, and it can forget about challenging in the 64-bit arena. The major drawback, as far as enthusiasts are concerned is in the use of registered memory. Let's not forget that AMD is positioning the FX-5x as a high-end uniprocessor, workstation-class CPU, as well as a mighty fast home CPU. But we're adamant that all the usual suspects will soon find themselves marketing high-speed matched ECC memory. Scaling ought to be better than the current Barton's, courtesy of a longer pipeline, but the 1MB L2 cache may limit overclocks to some degree. We'll find out as users chime in with their results.

There's lots of good in the FX-51, that much is plainly clear. AMD's technical team have done an outstanding job. The same praise cannot be fairly levelled at the P.R team. We're adamant that the vast majority of consumers will find it hard to differentiate between the various Opteron clones. There's the 1xx Opteron series, there's the FX-5x series, there's also another derivative with a single-channel memory controller; that's the Clawhammer, folks, and it doesn't use registered memory - yay. But wait, there's also destined to be a 939-pin non-ECC FX CPU that uses ordinary, unbuffered DRAM. Hell, we're confused thinking about it. Confusion is a problem that may be alleviated via sensible education, but with a die size of no less than 193mm², the FX CPUs will come to market with enormous price tags. Perhaps the jewel in the enthusiasts' crown will be the cheaper 754-pin Clawhammer - who knows.

It's difficult to ascertain the 64-bit qualities of the FX-51 right now. Limited OS support and limited driver support make any tentative benchmarking perilous. I'll leave that up to Mr. Technical, a.k,a Ryszard. What we can say, though, is that in 32-bit mode, the Athlon FX-51 currently has no performance peer. Thanks to a number of sensible core improvements, of which an on-die memory controller, larger L2 cache and SSE2 support are notable, especially with respect to gaming. The AMD Athlon64 FX-51 is a force to be reckoned with. It'll be hugely expensive, but that's kind of expected. We'd put our money on a cheaper model in the hope of overclocking it to FX-51 levels and above. We can't recommend the FX-51 solely due to its mammoth price, which is reckoned to be around £700, but if you want the fastest x86 CPU going, this is it.

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Athlon-64-FX-51-Processor-Review/Conclusions

The benchmarks speak for themselves – the Athlon 64 FX-51 processor is the fastest processor available for the desktop platform. With the exception of just a few of the tests we ran the Athlon FX-51 was able to knock out the P4 running at a 1 GHz faster clock rate, and in some cases by a hefty margin. AMD has definitely come full force back into the enthusiast market that any gamer, developer or even home office user would absolutely love to have. But the question is, will they buy it?


If you go with the Athlon 64 FX processor as your next upgrade, then your motherboard options are mostly limited to the Asus SK8N motherboard (~$220). Gigabyte is also developing a 940-pin nForce3 Professional motherboard, but I haven’t seen one yet to compare it with the Asus and it won’t be available for at least a few more weeks. MSI does have a K8T800 chipset motherboard ready for 940-pin processors, but it is only available in a dual-CPU formatn. Also, you’ll have to try hard to get some Registered DDR400 memory for your system as well, if you want it to perform at the top of its game. While Kingston has announced some modules, I don’t know when you’ll be able to buy it or when other manufactures like Corsair will be shipping either.





Interestingly, gone are the days when the Athlon 64 processor is the poster-boy for desktop 64-bit computing. At every possible turn, AMD marketeers and PR told us about the 64-bit capability and what it will mean to the consumer, gamer and developer; but we aren’t hearing that anymore – at least not as much. With the absence of a 64-bit Windows operating system available at launch time, putting emphasis on the Athlon FX being a 64-bit processor would have been suicide. Showing it to be the best possible 32-bit processor with a little bonus on top of that looks much more inviting to consumers and system builders.


AMD did include a pre-beta version of the Windows 64-bit operation system with the Athlon 64 FX-51 processor along with a CD full of demos that show the power of moving into 64-bit applications. The increases we were seeing very dramatic, sometimes by nearly 80%!! However, as these tests are not something that you, the reader, can get publicly, I didn’t think it proper to include them in the processor review pages. Perhaps after I return from Computex next week, I will take the time to compile the results and post them up for you all to see and judge for yourself.


So, if you really want the fastest desktop system available, then the Athlon 64 FX-51 processor is for you. But be prepared to drop a considerable wad of cash on the counter to claim that speed.

Intel was reduced to taking its highest bin P4 and releasing the "Emergency Edition" CPUs,and see how they mention Prescott,which was also called Pres-hot??

Then if you looked down the P4 range things were not as rosey:

https://techreport.com/review/6341/overclocking-the-athlon-xp-m-2500-processor/4

That is with the Athlon XP-M 2500 which was a very cheap CPU at the time which could overclock a decent amount. The Athlon 64 3000+ and 3200+ were faster than the non EE P4 CPUs even at 3.4GHZ in many games. IIRC,some of the Opterons were also good for overclocking too.

The issue is despite the HT and huge clockspeed advantage,you needed to have a P4 at the edge of its pants in games,to even compete and it cost more in many cases.

No doubt there were some great Pentium 4 CPUs like the Pentium D 805,but Intel were kind of lucky AMD had issues scaling clockspeed up at certain periods TBH and that the market was less interested in performance/watt at the time(apparently).

 

[kitfit1]

https://techreport.com/review/6341/overclocking-the-athlon-xp-m-2500-processor/4

That is with the Athlon XP-M 2500

This was my best with an XP-M 2500, not all that shabby at all at the time

Then moved on to an Opteron 175.................not too shabby either me thinks.

Next up was an E6600, also no too shabby

Then of course the Wolfdale E8600, even less shabby me thinks

The thing about ALL of these cpu's, they were ALL great and they were ALL a shear joy to own and clock. Nothing gives you more joy as an overclocker than to have a good cpu and run it to it's max. AMD and Intel have come up with great cpu's over the years...........................................let's not forget that peeps.

 

[smilingcrow]

AMD seem to have very good management at the top these days which is always important and doubly so when you are the underdog.
That gives me confidence as well as the decent CPU designs.
In the past they shot themselves in one foot whilst Intel was shooting them in the other.
They used to be like a band that put out some great albums but not consistently and failed to tour to promote them due to poor management and the lead guitarist being a junkie. A real wasted opportunity.

 

[Gerard]

AMD seem to have very good management at the top these days which is always important and doubly so when you are the underdog.
That gives me confidence as well as the decent CPU designs.
In the past they shot themselves in one foot whilst Intel was shooting them in the other.
They used to be like a band that put out some great albums but not consistently and failed to tour to promote them due to poor management and the lead guitarist being a junkie. A real wasted opportunity.

Bulldozer was a gamble, there's a saying out there i read for gpu\cpu development that something like "its like russian roulette, you make a set of decisions and 4 years later you find out if you blew your brains out". Can't recall if it was cpu or gpu related but i'd imagine it's the same for either. They thought software would go one way and it didn't, at least that's the jist i get of why bulldozer wasn't great.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

My first self build, and the reason I signed up to OcUK was the Athlon 2500XP Barton, the early ones were all unlocked if I recall? As I didn't have the M variant, but was able to set it at 3200XP speeds.
The performance of that system blew my mind at the time, it was so much faster than systems I'd been used to.

I really liked the older days, Press-hot and the Qtec PSU 'house on fire' meme.
So many of us getting terrible Hiper Type-Rs.

 

[smilingcrow]

Bulldozer was a gamble, there's a saying out there i read for gpu\cpu development that something like "its like russian roulette, you make a set of decisions and 4 years later you find out if you blew your brains out". Can't recall if it was cpu or gpu related but i'd imagine it's the same for either. They thought software would go one way and it didn't, at least that's the jist i get of why bulldozer wasn't great.

Those were just excuses that fanboys made as it was rubbish regardless of how you look at it.

 

[Gerard]

Those were just excuses that fanboys made as it was rubbish regardless of how you look at it.

It's ok saying that but it's not as if this was amds first cpu, there were obviously reasons they made the choices they did when designing the cpu. Wether that was a gamble on what direction software development would go or not I've no idea.

 

[Hagar]

My absolute favourite overclocking CPU of 2003. I bought three of them purely for overclocking. Using Abit NF7-S mobo, pin modded socket and Thermalright copper heatsink.

All the AMD XP Tbred / Barton variants could OC a decent amount with good cooling and a decent bios (Abit). The 1700+ filled a niche where it was possible for a cheap CPU to exceed or match the top of the range processor when overclocked, 50-80% was entirely possible but I did destroy one of them through too high a voltage. Pin modding allowed higher or lower multipliers to be used.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I remember the XP-M being in big demand and OcUK being one of the few retailers stocking it in the UK!

 

[Gerard]

Ah the good old days where you put on your cooler all the while bricking yourself in case you cracked the die.

 

[humbug]

My absolute favourite overclocking CPU of 2003. I bought three of them purely for overclocking. Using Abit NF7-S mobo, pin modded socket and Thermalright copper heatsink.

All the AMD XP Tbred / Barton variants could OC a decent amount with good cooling and a decent bios (Abit). The 1700+ filled a niche where it was possible for a cheap CPU to exceed or match the top of the range processor when overclocked, 50-80% was entirely possible but I did destroy one of them through too high a voltage. Pin modding allowed higher or lower multipliers to be used.

£40 :O

 

[HeX]

Good ol' T-Breds went through so many of them, did loads of PC builds for people around then and would swap them around depending on which was the best OC'ing chip

The 2500+ Mobile variant of the Barton was an absolute beast at the time.